Sports nutrition and even nutrition in general is not easy to understand, much less master. What works for you doesn't necessarily work for others: each of us is an experiment of one. But, fortunately, there are some simple rules that help break it down.

The easy answer: the fewer the ingredients the better. To quote the venerable Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Put another way, if you can't pronounce the ingredients or find them in your local market, the product probably isn't that good for you.That's what I learned at a nutrition training camp in Arizona, courtesy of Skratch Labs and its pioneering scientist, Dr. Allen Lim, the man behind what was once called "Secret Drink Mix," used by Tour de France cyclists to keep them hydrated, cramp-free and humming along in the saddle.

Lim isn't just an entrepreneur with a passion for improving performance. He and his partner in the kitchen, Biju Thomas, appreciate that food for sport isn't necessarily something you should consume when at rest. And they understand that you need to ask, "Does it make you faster, healthier, or better? Is it easy to ingest, obtain or prepare? Is it convenient? Does it taste good?" Lim sees a real difference between nutrition and nourishment and points to the example of a Hostess "apple pie," which has 46 ingredients and compares that to one you bake at home, probably with between 7-14 ingredients.

What exactly is "food?" Or, more importantly, what isn't food? Preservatives, emulsifiers, flavorings, coloring, artificial sweeteners: are these what you call food?

The nutrition camp reminded us of the values of the slow food movement and the importance of eating real food that you enjoy in the company of friends and family. A shared meal along with conversation is like a spice that changes the eating experience. Food from scratch and the prime ingredient of love is an intangible that nourishes in a way that highly-processed, pre-packaged food fails. Lim wants people to recognize and appreciate the cultural influence on food and notes that that too is part of the nourishment.

His advice is quite simple: "Learn to cook. Enjoy what you eat. If it makes you feel like crap, don't eat it. Eat real food unless it's logistically impossible. Not too much of it when you're not training hard. More when you are training hard or racing." You can't go too wrong with that, now can you?